In his yearly update to the Bradley County Commission, Smith estimates revenues of more than $19 million from 2012-16 from payments in lieu of taxes and Spring Creek developments.
“I’ve gotten calls from other county officials ... no one in Tennessee is (projecting) this kind of revenue in the next few years,” Smith said.
Smith said of this projected revenue only $4,488,425 is already allocated for future projects.
Projected revenues from Wacker Polysilicon North America, Amazon and Spring Creek have increased over last year due to expansion of the projects.
Smith said the revenue from Amazon’s expansion would begin to be collected this year.
The projected numbers also include revenues from P&G Duracell, Linde North America and an expected PILOT for expansion at Mars Chocolate North America.
“There are some areas that remain flat ... (but) we also have some good news on expansions,” Smith said.
One area that remains flat is residential construction.
“Our residential building is not very strong,” Smith said.
However, with new businesses coming in and current ones expanding, business building is where revenues are originating in the near future.
Smith said he hopes with business expansion, residential building will also pick up, stating this is where a lot of revenue growth in the past originated.
He projected it would be two to three years before there is a significant increase in this revenue.
While projected numbers look good, Smith cautioned the Commission that at least one more year of tough times is ahead.
“We’re still in for another year to 18 months of tight, tight budgets,” Commissioner Chairman Louie Alford said.
Smith said the projected revenue will give the Commission some options moving forward.
“We need to really sit down and plan how we are going to spend this, where it should be put,” Alford said.
The new numbers and the final numbers for the 2012 budget year will be used to update the county’s long-range plan.
Mayor D. Gary Davis pointed out the projected revenue is currently divided a number of ways for allocation. He said how the revenue is allocated could be changed in the future by the Commission.
There are also two projects that were not included in last year’s projections because the Commission has not officially approved funding. These include funding for a veterans home and the new industrial park.
Several commissioners stressed that this was the first time they were seeing this information and there was no way they could have had this updated information before the wheel tax referendum.
Smith said exact numbers of the projects were being worked on as late as Friday.
During the report Smith also highlighted the county’s accounts that had been transferred to CapitalMark.
“We were able to almost triple all of the county returns in these accounts,” Smith said.
